Last week we thought about Practicing the Fundamentals of Goals. Now we are ready to look at the second thing to think about with goal setting and results.

II. Plan Your Way to Goal Success – You can almost guarantee success if you plan your work and work your plan. Planning provides the step-by-step guide needed to accomplish your goals. A plan is like a road map and lists your travel plan.

Strategies for Planning Your Way to Success:

Know the Purpose of Planning

Plans help you analyze where you are and where you need to go.

Plans help you stay aware of resources that you may need over the course of the goal.

Plans show people around you that you’re a person with a purpose.

Planning helps maximize your time.

Planning helps gain buy-in by people who will be affected.

Plans provide evaluation criteria and a way to monitor performance.

Fit Your Plans to Circumstances

You need to take into account the realities that are going on around you.

Planning is not a reactive process, rather it is a way to create circumstances to move you forward rather than reacting to things that come your way.

Write Down You Goals and Plans

You increase your probability of achieving a goal when you write it down because you are committing a desired objective to writing, which is the first step towards accomplishing it.

Documenting goals forces us to drill down to specifics and makes your picture more clear through the detail.

Also, thinking that you can keep all goals to your memory is crazy. You need to write each step down to keep the goal clear and maximize the outcome. This helps you keep track of where you are going and where you have already been.

Answer “These Six Important Questions”

What is the goal? What specifically do I want to accomplish?

Why do I want to achieve this goal?

When do I need to (expect to) achieve this goal?

Where am I now in relation to this goal?

Who will be involved n helping me achieve this goal?

How will I accomplish this goal?

Note: Refer to this list each time you engage in goal planning and it will help begin the clear step-by-step process that you need to commit to.

Plan Your Way

Create Contingency Plans

Hedge your bets by including three levels of projections to help handle any contingencies.

The most likely – What you think will actually happen.

The least likely – The worst-case scenario and outcome you can imagine for what you are planning.

The most optimistic – The best possible scenario you can imagine if everything goes beyond your expectations.

Don’t Forget “Murphy’s Law”

More often than any of us wish, things will go wrong…Big Time!

This is why we need to put back up plans in place (like backing up your computer onto an eternal hard drive).

To avoid Murphy showing up, be sure to include several “what if’s” in your planning process.